Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
